Combat
These alternate combat rules are here to make combat feel more dynamic and dangerous and while they may feel severe at times, remember these rules work both ways, and what may seem like a new disadvantage to you is more than likely to be a new weakness you can use on your enemies. Note also some new or older terms are used from other versions of the game, such as: Partial Action: Abandoned in 3.5 this simply refers to when you are only allowed a Move or ''Standard Action and not both. In these times you will not be allowed a Full-Round Action, but should you want to try you may have half of it now and half at the start of your next turn, leaving only a partial action left. 'Knock Down Damage: Explained below, it is equal to half your total hit points and represents how much damage you can take in one go before a severe effect (usually getting knocked down). ''Manuever and Defence'': Explained bellow but are basically better named terms for CMB and CMD though the latter is now rolled for and not static/ ''Armour'': This is how armor should actually be spelt. '''Knock Down This a set amount of damage equal to half your total hit points, that if taken in one hit requires you to make a save or suffer an effect depending upon the damage dealth. It is a DC 15 Fortitude saving throw which depends on the type of damage do:ne *Bludgeoning: you are thrown back 5-feet and land prone (a mjove action will be required to get up on your turn) *Piercing: a major artery is hit and you lose 1 hp her round until a DC 15 Heal check is administered or 1 point of possitive energy healing is applied *Slashing: the pain casues you to lose a partial action next turn (if you already only had a partial action you get none) *Energy: you are overwhelmed by the shock and suffer one of the effects above as appropriate. *Misc. if the energy is uncertain presume they lose a partial action This replaces the Massive Damage optional rule. 'Critical Initiative' Unless you are prepared for a specific attack, on the first round of combat most opponents are flat-footed and only have a partial action. If though you roll a natural 20 on your Initiative check you recieve a full-round action as usual and unless someone beat you (with a higher Initiative bonus and a roll of 20) you wont be flat-footed. Conversly a roll of a natural 1 means you lose even that partial action you would have had, and remain flat-footed untiul you do recieve an action. Should you have been prepared for the attack etc. there is not benefit beyond being first from getting a natural 20, but a natural 1 reduces your full-round action to only a partial. 'Maneuver and Defence' Instead of the clunky terms CMB and CMD, simple MANEVER and DEFENCE is used, as these terms have no meaning elsewhere. In addition to this, so maneuvers don't seem so static, a roll is made for Defence opposed to the flat 10 + modifiers. *Defence: d20 + Str, Dex, Size mod, anything aplicable to the Maneuver resisting 'Parry' As an immediate action you may opt when attacked to Parry. This reduces your AC by -5 but allows you to block the attack by making an attack roll with a -5. If you beat their attack roll it fails, if you match rolls your weapons lock and you must reroll. A Critical success (with confirmation) on a defense allows an free bonus attack. *Immediate Action: Opposed Attack Rolls (defender at -5) and -5 to current AC until beggining of next turn. 'Defending Unarmed' The base 10 points that are provided to your AC are presumed to be made up of a combination of dodging and defending yourself. 5 points of this is directly from not having a Dexterity of 0 (a -5 modifier) but the other 5 points are fron using your weapon to defend yourself. Should you be made unarmed reduce your AC by 5, should you simply have an inadequet weapon for defence (such as a bow) simply lower it by 2. This may seem severe but it also applies to enemies you encounter if disarmed. Characters with unarmed combat or natural attacks to not suffer these penalties. *Poorly armed (bow etc.) -2 AC *Completely unarmed -5 AC 'Follow' When someone leaves your threatend area that you are engaged in combat with, you may chose to follow them. If this is only a 5-foot step this is an immediate action; if you use a move action this is a forced move action (an action that is lost from your next turn), but if their speed requires you to use a double move this is a forced full action (you lose your full alotment of actions on your round). If the person you are following has a greater speed than you, they may be able to "out run" you. If they leave your area while not doing a withdrawl action they still provoke an attack of opportunity as usual. If you are forced to run (move double speed as a move action) the rules as below apply. *Moving out of someone's threaten area, even for a 5ft step, allows them to use a Forced Action to follow them *If this move would normally allow an attack of opportunity you may recieve this instead of following 'Running' While running, you lose your Dex bonus to your AC as well as suffer a -2 from incidental melee attacks. From ranged attacks you still lose your Dex bonus but gain a +1 for every 30ft of your standard speed. *Melee Attacks: no Dex and to -2 AC *Ranged Attacks: no Dex but +1 to AC for every 30ft of running speed 'Splitting Actions' Under the normal rules it is impossible to take a standard action and save the move action by delaying it or vice versa. Lorald house rules allow you to do this, so for example you could use your turn to run up to a corner (a move action) and ready an action to attack someone who runs round the corner (a standard action). When this is done, your turn in the initiative moves to the place where you take the second action. *Can delay second half of an Action, new initiative takes place when second action does not first 'Continious Charge' Sometimes when you charge you fall short of your target by a handful of feet, being maybe 5 or 10 feet away but with still an attack action available but not within range of anyone. This means while you are charging a target could just simply step in and make an attack before you hit them. Calculating this distance before hand you may even decide not to do it, and wait for them to come to you. While this is a logical tactic it doesn't seem very real. To prevent this break from versimillitude, considered all unused attacks from a charge to be readied as the Splitting Your Actions above, and if your target comes within your threat range (as all actions are meant to be happening at roughly the same time) you recieve an attack on them first. Your place in the initiaitve will move in just before theirs, most likely later than it was before. *Attacks from unused charges are considered Readied 'Drive Back' To stop combat from being static, when in melee with an opponent, should you beat their AC by 10 you force them to take a 5-foot step back or sideways, you moving along with them. If this would put them into danger you instead make them flatfooted for 1 round. If they are then knocked back again they will fall into the danger area. *If roll attack of 10 over AC force opponent to move 5-foot back or sideways *If cannot move 5-foot back become prone instead 'Aiming' In ranged combat you may be in a circumstance where you can train you weapon on a target who isn't moving much (not walking or running). Should you spend a full-round action on this you are granted a +2 to you next shot. If they are moving at standard speed or running you need to make an initial attack roll with no arrow fired at their touch AC. If this is done the following round you gain the +2 to hit. If the target is running normal bonuses apply (no Dex, +1 AC for every 30-foot). If the target is aware of you they may try and avoid this aiming by making an Acrobatics check vs. an attack roll with your ranged weapon (but no arrow is actually fired). Modifers for running are added on as listed below. #+2 to hit target with a full-round action spent in preperation #+2 to hit moving target with a full round action and ''an initial touch attack roll (with no arrow fired) 'Shields' It doesn't seen right that you should be given a shield bonus to your AC when you are flat-footed and unprepared to lift it up to defend yourself, and so in the Lorald system you do not. While this may seem like taking something away, to compensate you may use your Shield to Parry as stated above with a bonus equal to the shield's AC bonus. *No shield bonus to AC when flat-footed *Can use shield to Parry applying the AC bonus to the roll 'Vital Threaten' There are times when you do not want to kill a person, but instead put a sword to their throat and let them know with one move you could now kill or severely wound them. This is done by making an attack roll with a -6 roll. If this hits you do no damage but put your oppenent in a situation that the opponent provokes an attack of opportunity if they try and make any sort of attack or sudden move declared by you. This attack is made with a +4 from you. Any specific maneuvers (such as Called Shot or Forced Critical) have thier modifiers apply to ''both attack rolls. *Roll to hit with -6 penalty. No damage on successful hit *If successful opponent provokes and attack of opportunity if they attack *Gain a +4 bonus on this seccond attack 'Defensive Retrieve' Some times in combat you may wish to retrieve an object from a bag or pouch that would provoke an attack of oportunity and feel you have no other option around this. This option allows you to attempt such an action with a chance of sucess without the attack of oportunity by risking failing the action entirely. With a Dexterity DC 15 check you may retrieve a stored item without provoking an attack of opportunity as a standard action (or full-round action if it would usually take a standard). Failure on this check by less than 5 means you retrieve the object but do provike the attack. Failure but over 5 and less than 10 means you provoke the attack and fail to retrieve the item. Failure by 10 or more means you actually lose the item due to the attack, it being dropped on the floor etc. You may as an option use these same rules to pick up the item again but with the same penalties and chance of failure. DEXTERITY CHECK RESULT  15 +: item retireved with no attack of oportunity  10 - 14: item retrieved with standard attack of opportunity  5 - 9: item not retrieved but still suffer atack of opportunity  0 - 4 attack of opportunity and item dropped 'Quick Drinking' As with retrieving an item defensively, you should be allowed to try and drink a potion while moving or running. This requires a Dexteity DC 10 if moving at normal speed in the same action, or DC 15 of moving at greater speed. Failure by 5 means you simply fail to drink the potion, while failure by less than 10 but over 5 means the item is dropped. *Drink potion as part of a Move Action (standard move): Dexterity DC 10 *#Result 5 - 9: potion not drunk *#Result 0 - 5: potion dropped *Drink potion as part of a Move Action (run move): Dexterity DC 15 #Result 10 - 14: potion not drunk #Result 0 - 9: potion dropped 'Critical Fumbles' On an attack roll of a natural 1 a Dexterity roll results in the following: *10 +: no fumble *6 - 9: provoke an attack or opportunity *2 - 5: lose weapon *1: cause full damage to yourself 'Critical Hits' If on the confirmation of the critical hit, another critical is rolled an additional confirmation may be made. If this is successful an additional multiplier is added to the damage (but not more than this). 'Double 20s' If an opponent is struct with a natural 20 (not just a critical) and another 20 is rolled (a 1 in 400 chance) the opponent must make a DC 15 Fortitude check or instantly be dropped down to 0 Hit Points (unless the damage from the hit would already put them to lower than that). *Two natural 20s: Fort DC 15 or reduced to 0 or lower hp 'Forced Criticals' *Provokes an attack of opportunity *DC 10+ the minimum critical range *Failure does misses the attack entirely 'Rolling For AC' If you are aware of an attack you are going to recieve you may ready a Dodge (with appropriate bonus if applicable) by instead of using the standard 10 for your AC rolling and adding all applicable bonuses to AC. This must be declared before the attack and is otherwise a Immediate Action. *Roll for AC as an immediate action 'Sprint' Strength DC 20 increases your run speed by one speed incriminent (x 5 instead of x 4) with a full move, or half an incriment with a move action (x 2.5 instead of x 2). This automatically puts you at your usualy endurance limit and every subsiquent round requires a DC 10 + 1 per previous round not to become Fatigues. *Strength DC 20 increases speed by one incriment (half if only move action) *Constitution DC 10 + 1 per round to not become Fatigued 'Flat-Footed' If 5 points of your AC are considered to be part of your defence with your weapon it holds to reason that when someone feights you this bonus shouldn't be as high. While the loss of all 5 points is too high, consider anyone loses their Dex bonus also suffers a -2 to AC. This helps to take in to consideration heavily armoued people who are caught by surprise who don't have Dex bonuses. Bare in mind this still applies to people who are trained in unarmed combat as they are slightly less able to defend themselves, but it doesn't apply to people already suffering a penalty for having no weapons at all. *Flatt-Footed imposes an additional -2 to AC 'Facing' As an option opposed to being flanked by two opponents you may choose to Face one so they lose their Flanking bonus, and the target opposite gains a +4 bonus to hit you and you are denied your Dex to them as well. Opponents from the side still get standard flanking bonus. You cannot face more than one target than can fit on your facing side (i.e. 1 if you are medium and take up one square; 2 if you are large and take up four squares etc.) *Facing Towards: suffer no AC penalty or bonus to hit *Facing Away: No Dex to AC and +4 to hit *Sides: Normal Flanking bonuses Reparair